Preaching: A Shell Here and a Shell There

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.—John 1:14

None of us can approach a serious study and consideration of the eternal nature and person of Jesus Christ without sensing and confessing our complete inadequacy in the face of the divine revelation....

What should we do, then?

All we can hope to do is to toddle along on our short legs and gaze heaven-ward, like a goose whose wings have been clipped but whose heart is in the sky. Those wings just will not take her there.

Now, I have said all of this because my best faith and my loftiest expectation do not allow me to believe that I can do justice to a text that begins: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14) and concludes: No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him (John 1:18).

This is what we will attempt to do: we will walk along the broad seashore of God and pick up a shell here and a shell there, holding each up to the light to admire its beauty. While we may ultimately have a small store of shells to take with us, they can but remind us of the truth and the fact that there stretches the vastness of the seashore around the great lips of the oceans—and that still buried there is far more than we can ever hope to find or see Christ the Eternal Son, 9-11.

"Lord, I glory in the shells I'm looking at this morning—and revel in the vastness of the seashore around me! Amen."

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